Data from the French statistics agency INSEE showed that in 2013 (when the last stats were available) there were 5.6 million civil servants on France's payroll, an increase on the previous year's total by 1.5 percent.

It was a less than one percent jump (.3 percent hike over 2011), though enough to continue the nearly yearly growth seen in the French civil service since 1980, French magazine L'Express reported at the time.